On goofball candidates – Blake Hounshell in NYT:

‘In 2021, as Democratic strategists brainstormed ways to defend their threadbare control of the Senate, they began an aggressive communications strategy with the goal of choosing their adversaries.
Their best chance of hanging on, Senator Gary Peters of Michigan told staff members at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was to focus like a laser on the four seats they needed to keep: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire.
“We knew we needed to localize the races and disqualify our Republican opponents,” said David Bergstein, the group’s communications director.
But Peters, the committee’s chairman, also authorized a bit of skulduggery. The emerging plan had two main components: deterring potentially strong Republicans from entering races against those “core four” Democratic incumbents, and “maximizing the chaos” within Republican primaries.’

(…)

‘Two Republican governors had Democrats especially worried: Chris Sununu of New Hampshire and Doug Ducey of Arizona. Both were popular, relatively moderate and skilled at raising cash. Republican leaders in Washington were recruiting them hard to run for Senate.
But each man had points of vulnerability, Democrats thought. Could they keep them out? It’s hard to say how much of a difference the Democrats’ meddling ultimately made. Some Republicans and allies of Ducey and Sununu say that other factors — including a shared disdain for the Senate and, perhaps, presidential ambitions — were more central to their calculations.
But either way, their decisions not to run loom large in the rearview mirror. Republicans failed to reclaim the Senate in large part because of unproven candidates chosen by Trump. Now, the recriminations are flying.’

(…)

‘By the time their vicious primary season ended, Republicans had nominated five political novices backed by Trump: Blake Masters, a hard-edge venture capital executive, in Arizona; Don Bolduc, a far-right retired Army officer, in New Hampshire; Herschel Walker, a troubled former football star, in Georgia; Mehmet Oz, the celebrity surgeon, in Pennsylvania; and J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author, in Ohio.
All struggled to raise money, build campaign infrastructures or appeal to independent voters. Only Vance won outright, with Walker’s race heading to a runoff next month.
In August, McConnell griped publicly about the “quality” of the candidates that Trump had saddled him with, amid a running feud with Scott over tactics, strategy and money.
Republicans are now having a public throw-down about just whose fault it is that they lost the Senate. Conservative elites are blaming Trump; his allies are blaming McConnell; Scott and McConnell’s allies are blaming one another.
There’s plenty of grist for each side, but the case against Trump and his collection of “goofball” candidates, as McConnell privately called them, seems stronger.’

Read the article here.

Not only did the Dems successfully discourage some strong candidates to run for Senate (apparently the Senate is not such a great place) – they probably supported the goofball candidates in other ways. After all, it can be wise to put money in the primaries on the weakest candidate of your opponent.
We will see how the GOP reacts in 2024, cheering the worst candidates among the Dems?

Also, 2016 taught us that the goofball candidate can win, against all expectations.

They might not win every election, but the schmuck might win again. (The schmuck is a goofball who turns out to be a Democrat.)

Democracy is about low expectations and I say this without cynicism, just a hint of Buddhism.